


Bad Woman to Keep

by fuckup



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Friendship study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 09:44:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3724276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckup/pseuds/fuckup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily Evans is basically the worst at keeping a best friend. Why does James Potter have such an easy time of it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Woman to Keep

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from 'Black Sheep' by Gin Wigmore, which is a total Lily song to me.

Lily Evans didn't fancy James Potter. She watched him for that lean body, wanted him only with that arrogance boiled down to confidence, personality all scooped out for recycling. The face he could keep. That’s what it had been. That day at the lake. Lucy Starch had been mooning over Black, appreciative murmurs had been abundant from all of them but Mary, whose sing-song comments were, Lily was dismayed to just know, nothing more than her playing pixie stirring the pot.

Once or twice Lily had been asked if there was something the matter, did she not think she’d done that well? What she got for not engaging with the rest of them, bar an eyeroll here or there. Lily couldn’t remember what she’d said in response. Now or then. Sometimes her mouth did that. Rattled off responses her brain knew by rote, sure in the knowledge that it wouldn’t let the rest of her down. Her eyes had been on Potter messing up his stupid hair, then up in the sky, away from the bespectacled gaze flitting over to their direction. As if any of them cared that he could catch that snitch he was buggering about with, every single time, no matter that Seeker wasn’t his position.

Why couldn’t any of the decent boys that asked her out look like Potter? Not the hair or that ridiculous strut, but the arms, eyes, mouth, hips… She’d been glad of the scorching weather, annoyed by the expressive skin red hair granted her. The last thing she needed was a misplaced blush convincing the rest of them she actually had a thing for Potter, or Black, or whoever the hell it was they were chatting about just then.

She’d been watching the squirrels up in the willow tree. Not him. It was just from the corner of the eye that she’d caught him standing up, had right away turned her focus back to Mary, and Lucy, and all the rest of them. If Potter was going to come over for some attention, he had another thing coming. Except he hadn’t, and it was Lily who was the worst for it. If she knew now what she knew then… would she still have slipped her damp feet into her sandals and elbowed her way through the gathering crowd to put a stop to it? Would she, perhaps, have retrieved her journal from her satchel and wrote a hissing message at Lupin to be a flipping Prefect and reign in the two of them? He didn’t need help from filthy little mudbloods like her. So that was that.

It should have been before that, shouldn't it? When he shrugged off what Mulciber tried to do to Mary, tried to shift the blame to Potter, who'd risked his life to save him just days before. Ungrateful much? She'd slanted her eyebrows together, crossed her arms across her chest and known she was past the days of wanting to lean in and breathe logic over his face. Slytherin didn't mean evil; she'd never faltered in that mentality, not once, so why had Sev?

Mary had petted her hair, brushed it smooth and soothing, as the girls had gathered around and offered her comfort she wouldn’t have expected from Cheryl from 7th, or Laura from 4th. Up in the dorm from the minute Transfiguration OWL was over and done with. No boys allowed. Good, but not enough.

The evening after, Lily sat in the Prefects Bathroom's bay window, chin on her knee and eyes up in the sky, cloaked in a Look-At-Me-Not Potion Severus and she had perfected together. Vivid blue in color, Tardis-inspired, tasted like watermelon soaked in chlorine but it worked just so well. Prefects traipsed out and in, stuffing her nostrils with honeydew and strawberry bubbles, reading in the bath or kissing, puckering noises and water disturbances that should have had Lily scrunching up her nose and flouncing out. Done something more than sigh against the wrinkled skin of her knee.

There were a lot of things Lily should have done. Put down a harsher line when Dirk had told her, clearly embarrassed by her own apparent bad taste, that her best friend had called him a mudblood. As if the fact that she agreed to work on a Potions project with him was any sane reason for that. It was out of class, wasn’t it? She and Severus had always been Potions partners in class, and what was so wrong with branching out? It had been a mistake to prioritize friendship over her own morals. Losing Petunia had been atrocious, made her weak to the idea of losing Sev, too. It had seemed unbearable. The reality was that he’d chosen terrorists who wanted to kill her and anyone else like her. Even worse.

Snow-laced water spiked up almost to the ceiling, swooshing around the edges of the bath. As if that wasn’t enough to alert them to their presence, Black's distinctive hoarse laugh cut through Lily’s thoughts as if they were clingfilm and he a knife. All of it should've done more than made her glance over and frown at what she saw: Potter uncoiling from a cannonball and grinning up at Black; Lupin with his feet in the bath, smiling sheepishly; Pettigrew hovering about but still desperately delighted.

Of course Lupin was abusing his Prefect privileges for his friends. Lily lent back against the wall rather than the window, arms crossed, and tried to drum up some outrage, some vindication. Even a little bit of irritation would do. All she got was the thrum of blood in her own ears, a certain pressure beyond her eyes, those tip-offs her body gave her that it was about to make her feel awfully sad. Lily pressed his fingers to her temple and breathed. Crying would most definitely breach the effects of the Potion. James sodding Potter was the absolute (second to) last person she wanted to see her just then.

She should leave. It was just so much effort to move. Let alone think of a way to get out of the Bathroom without any of them being the wiser. Canceling the Potion was an option only in the abstract. The only thing to do was wait them out. She'd been here for hours, hiding away in her own thoughts, paying no mind to anyone else that slipped in and out.

So really, it made less than no sense that Lily passed the next hour with her head ensconced between her own two hands, watching the four of them mess about being best mates. She didn't pay too much attention to what they said. Just let it wash over her, talk of the next full moon that seemed to confirm that Remus was a werewolf, mixed in with some tosh about them running around with him as animals. Her own name came up once or twice, and she ignored those parts most resolutely, choosing to focus instead on the glow of disbelieving gladness that warmed Remus's face at a half-smile from Black, some muttered joke shared with Pettigrew, even a splash of bathwater right in the face thanks to Potter.

Each of them had three best friends, while Lily was missing two. She bit down on the tender skin of her wrist and shifted in place, for different kinds of comfort. Surely this was unfair. The lot of them were bullies, for goodness’s sake. And yet, the three of them had clearly stuck by Lupin despite his lycanthropy, had it in them to trade jokes and sidelong grins about it, absolutely no distaste visible in any of them.

Lily had heard what had been said about werewolves. Had herself stormed out of class in protest when this year’s Defense Professor, subsequently let go, had to the shock of no one but herself casually referred to them as ‘the worst kind of dark creature.’ Only now did she remember the startled look Lupin had given her as she’d read Dunstan the riot act and then brushed past his and Pettigrew’s table on her way out, only now did she think that perhaps, Potter and Black had been doing more than taking the opportunity to ditch when they followed her, that Pettigrew had greater reason than having no mind of his own when she’d heard later that he’d grabbed Lupin’s arm and dragged him out, too.

Green eyes settled not on Potter’s water-slick muscles, nor the clinging material of his swim trunks, but on those dark hazel eyes of his, blind to her attentive presence. Possibly, just possibly, the confidence that gleamed in them was not there completely without merit. It felt like swallowing peas solo to admit it, no mashed potatoes nor baby carrots on plate to mask the chewy taste that even now cloying up her throat, but there it was. Potter had it in him to be a person she could be proud to know. So had Severus, once upon a time. So had Petunia.

Lily unscrewed the cap on one of the vials decorated with lillies Horace had gifted her with, this birthday past, and took a sip of swimming pool and tangy fruit. Six minutes to let it settle in her system, and then she rose up on her tip toes, brushing herself off and shuffling her feet back into the fluffy bunny slippers that were worn through on the right sole. They’d wonder, of course, just why the portrait had creaked open for no apparent reason, but with the Potion at full potency, they wouldn’t see the redheaded reason why. Good enough for her. The Marauders could use a little more bafflement in their lives, potential greatness be damned.


End file.
